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January 15 - March 30, 2021
In 1788, he concluded that in examining our planet, “we find no vestige of a beginning,—no prospect of an end.”44
Hutton captured the inquisitive spirit of his time when he commented to a friend that given sufficient attention, “a bag of gravel is a history to me, and . . . will tell wondrous tales.”46
One measure of the significance of a new idea is the degree to which it spurs new thinking in other areas.
Charles Darwin in turn may have arrived at his theory of natural selection in part by combining Hutton’s conception of vast time with his friend Adam Smith’s theories of the free market, applying both to the natural world.
Their so-called immaculate 1744 edition of the works of the Roman poet Horace—a particular favorite of Enlightenment thinkers—was widely believed not to contain a single mistake.
In sum, as one historian puts it, “the Scottish Enlightenment, above all other versions of that western world intellectual phenomenon, took on a heightened significance in the fashioning of the early republic. The story of the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment and the transmission of its ideas to America is fundamental to the history of American thought.”62
a quotation from Euripides, the fifth-century Athenian tragedian, that in translation reads: “The words of truth are simple, and justice needs no subtle interpretations, for it has a fitness in itself; but the words of injustice, being rotten in themselves, require clever treatment.”
Epicurus does not seem to appear in either of the commonplace books, literary or legal, which raises the question of when Jefferson first encountered the philosopher who would influence him so deeply.
“Pleasure is the beginning and end of living happily,” Epicurus states in a letter that Laertius quotes. But, he continues, “we are not speaking of the pleasures of a debauched man, . . . but we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and of the soul from confusion.”88
Jefferson would remain devoted to Epicurean thought for the remainder of his life. He summarized that belief system thusly: Happiness the aim of life. Virtue the foundation of happiness Utility the test of virtue . . . Virtue consists in Prudence Temperance Fortitude Justice90
When one seeks to understand Jefferson, it is almost always helpful to look to Epicurus.
Jefferson is in many ways the most complex of the founders, someone with, as the historian Carl Becker puts it, a “sensitized mind [that] picked up and transmitted every novel vibration in the intellectual air.”
been correct when he asserted that, “Thomas Jefferson was European to the bone.”
As he once wrote in a parting letter to a lover, the beautiful Italian-English artist Maria Cosway: “The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.” That is a recipe for Epicureanism, but it also provides a pathway for emotional withdrawal. Indeed, that letter continued, “The most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves, and to suffice for our own happiness.”96
This approach might also have enabled him to justify his failure to examine his own contradictions, if by doing so he would suffer pain or confusion. It might have been too discomfiting for him to recognize that as a man, he was forward thinking but not forward acting.97 This tension may have been one reason he would be so ambivalent and uneven in his exercise of power.
Of the first four presidents, James Madison was the one most influenced by Scottish thinking of the time, which led him to the Enlightenment and from there to Roman and Greek history and philosophy.
Luckily, there are records of the contents of Robertson’s library. So we can conclude that, like John Adams, Madison probably was educated partly by Dodsley’s Preceptor, which stood on Robertson’s shelves, alongside works by Horace, Justinian, Sallust, Montaigne, Locke, and Montesquieu.
Robertson: Madison’s tutor during his youth.
Montesquieu constituted a bridge between the Enlightenment and the classical world. In his study of the Enlightenment, Peter Gay finds that “Montesquieu was the most influential writer of the eighteenth century.” The Frenchman’s thinking had an impact from France to Russia to Italy, Gay adds, but most of all in Scotland. There, his Spirit of Laws became “the common coin of learned discussion,” always in the background even when not explicitly acknowledged.5
Sir Isaiah Berlin, the twentieth-century British philosopher, concluded that Montesquieu’s impact remains all around us, pervasive yet often unseen, in the form of modern liberal democracy. Three hundred years ago, Berlin wrote, the French philosophe advocated constitutionalism, the preservation of civil liberties, the abolition of slavery; gradualism, moderation, peace, internationalism, social and economic progress with due respect to national and local tradition. He believed in justice and the rule of law; defended freedom of opinion and association; detested all forms of extremism and
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How can a republic be made sustainable? And can a large and expanding nation even be a genuine republic? How can smaller entities confederate into something larger? Is there a way for a nation to wield the power of a large state while retaining the flexibility of a smaller one?
In his writings, Montesquieu always looked first and foremost to Rome and Greece. “It is impossible,” he sighs happily at one point, “to be tired of so agreeable a subject as ancient Rome.”
Montesquieu concluded that large nations could not be republics, flatly stating that “it is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist.”8
“What makes free states last a shorter time than others is that both the misfortunes and the successes they encounter almost always cause them to lose their freedom,” the French thinker warned. “A wise republic should hazard nothing that exposes it to either good or bad fortune. The only good to which it should aspire is the perpetuation of its condition.”
Irving Brant, Madison’s most thorough biographer, calls Madison’s decision to go to distant Princeton “an act of near-treason to Virginia.”
“Mr, Madison a gloomy, stiff creature, they say is clever in Congress, but out of it has nothing engaging or even bearable in his manners—the most unsociable creature in Existence,” commented Martha Dangerfield Bland, wife of another Virginian politician.25
Madison must have reveled in colonial Princeton. As one biographer phrases it, the college “smoked with rebellion.” One visitor to the campus was perplexed to find that the young men, whom he had expected to be preparing for the ministry, plunged into “discussing . . . the most perplexing political topics.”26 As another Madison biographer put it, “The College of New Jersey in Madison’s day was the seedbed of sedition and nursery of rebels Tory critics charged it with being.”
At a time when 90 percent of Harvard’s student body came from Massachusetts and 75 percent of Yale’s from Connecticut, Princeton by design drew from the entire Eastern Seaboard.
Aside from that embarrassment, he took to Princeton swimmingly, despite being pale, sickly, and small, standing a few inches above five feet and weighing less than 140 pounds.48
Madison was extremely discreet about his health, but many years later would allude to his seizures in autobiographical notes, stating that “causes preventing him from entering the Army, viz his feeble health, and a Constitutional liability, to sudden attacks, somewhat resembling Epilepsy, and suspending the intellectual functions.”50
“In the instruction of the youth, care is taken to cherish a spirit of liberty, and free enquiry; and not only to permit, but even encourage their right of private judgment, without presuming to dictate with an air of infallibility, or demanding an implicit assent to the decisions of the preceptor.”54
That fall, at the end of Madison’s first year, one of the commencement speakers was Witherspoon’s son James, whose subject was the obligation to resist a king who acts cruelly or unlawfully.59
In the first sentence of his 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume had defined “moral philosophy” as “the science of human nature.”60
“True virtue certainly promotes the general good,” Witherspoon stated. “Private and public interest . . . are distinct views; they should be made to assist, and not destroy each other.”
Hence it appears that every good form of government must be complex, so that the one principle may check the other. It is of consequence to have as much virtue among the particular members of a community as possible; but it is folly to expect that a state should be upheld by integrity in all who have a share in managing it. They must be so balanced, that when one draws to his own interest or inclination, there may be an over poise upon the whole.
In this discussion of checks and balances, Witherspoon may have planted the seeds of the all-important tenth of Madison’s Federalist Papers, written nearly two decades later, in which Madison explains how interests can balance each other in a government expressly designed to curb excessive power in any one person or branch.
when Rome’s leaders forgot their dignity and were seduced by corruption, then its soldiers, “urged only by hopes of plunder and rapine, unfeelingly committed the most flagrant enormities; and hired to the trade of death, with relentless fury they perpetrated the most cruel murders, whereby the streets of imperial Rome were drenched with her noblest blood.”
Heed the Roman example, he urged his listeners: Oppose oppression, disdain luxury, and remain united and patriotic. Do so, he promised, and “you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny, with her accursed train, will hide their hideous heads in confusion, shame and despair.” Then America may be “a land of liberty” and “the seat of virtue.”73
It is in his letters to Madison that we probably come as close as we ever can to glimpsing the real Jefferson, or at least the least guarded one.
What do We mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.2 That assertion of it being over by 1775 isn’t completely true, because the Revolution could have failed in a variety of ways during the fighting. But Adams is right that many of the changes in the way of thinking happened before the first shot was fired. And he was one of the first to light the fuse of the
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Liberty, . . . which has never been enjoyd, in its full Perfection, by more than ten or twelve Millions of Men at any Time, since the Creation, will reign in America, over hundreds and Thousands of Millions at a Time.3 It was a striking point at which to begin assessing the political situation, by looking deep into the future of the nation, when it would be vastly more populous than it was when he was writing. This is Adams at his best, taking the longest possible view as a way of organizing his strategic thinking, looking at American politics as the Scotsman Hutton had looked at the rocks of
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So, he concluded, “Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker.”6 This was about as succinct a summary of the radical American position as was possible: The American people had no need for a king to stand between them and God. Rather they had a God-given right to liberty.
Thomas Jefferson stepped on the national stage for the first time, at the age of thirty-one. As happened with Adams and his essay, Jefferson was able to offer a way of thinking about the changing politics of the colonies, to capture the changing mood of many and distill it into words. For Jefferson, this came in the form of his written advice to Virginia’s delegation heading to the Congress, which soon was issued as a pamphlet under the title A Summary View of the Rights of British America.19 It was an odd debut. As one modern analyst puts it, the essay is both tendentious and a mishmash. In
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What is most significant about the pamphlet is its flatly militant tone. As Pauline Maier puts it, “Because Jefferson refused to be constrained by the conventions of British politics, including that which insisted ‘the king can do no wrong,’ A Summary View became the first sustained piece of American political writing that subjected the King’s conduct to direct and pointed criticism.”24
We should leave behind our “expressions of servility,” Jefferson contended, and show the king we are not seeking his favors but reminding him of our rights. He ended with an absolute statement: “the god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.”25 In other words, to reduce American freedom was to challenge God.
No, Adams replied, I must go. “The die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon; swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country, was my unalterable determination.”28
Events began to accelerate early in 1775. The principles of the Revolution, Adams wrote in February of that year, were that all men are equal, and that power is delegated to leaders by the people. These, he continued, “are the principles of Aristotle and Plato, of Livy and Cicero, of Sydney, Harrington and Lock.”33
In March 1775, Patrick Henry rose to speak in Richmond. He concluded by shouting “Give me liberty—or give me death.” To ensure his audience grasped the allusion to Cato, he thrust an ivory letter opener toward his chest, in imitation of a scene in Addison’s play.
In January, William Pitt the Elder, a former prime minister, rose in the House of Lords to support a motion to pull British troops out of Boston. “I have read Thucydides, . . . but I must declare and avow that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, . . . no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the general congress of Philadelphia.”35
Washington saw his choice clearly and cast it in terms true to the central role that “virtue” played in his life. “Unhappy it is though to reflect, that a Brother’s Sword has been sheathed in a Brother’s breast, and that, the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?”36
Contrary to his image, Jefferson was not really a literary man. He had prodigious talents and a boundless range of interests, yet his tastes in literature were surprisingly pedestrian, as his prose often was.
